“I get jealous. I want your calling. I want to do those fun, amazing, big, fast things. I want to do cool stuff for God. Quiet is boring. Mundane seems lame. I feel pathetic and purposeless.

Social media stretches me beyond my calling. It makes we want people and places and things that God has called you to, not me. I find these words of John Calvin to be helpful:

Each individual has his own living assigned to him by the Lord as a sort of sentry post so that he may not heedlessly wander about throughout life.

Your calling isn’t my calling, and if I try to take what’s yours, I’ll wander heedlessly through life. I’ll leave the places of good, fruitful, productive work God has staked out for me, and wander into wastelands instead.”

The legacy of the Mii, Nintendo’s player avatar creations, continues with Miitomo. Uniting iOS and Android users, Miitomo is a personable social network experiment. Inhabited by Facebook and Twitter friends, Miitomo encourages and rewards players for:

Answering questions

Reading, listening, liking, and responding to your friends replies

Gamification of Social Media: Check

There is also an odd game within the game called Miitomo Drop (drop a player down a board, hope they hit something valuable). As well as options to buy and dress up a player’s Mii. Style points awarded, of course.

Beyond the spongy exterior, the heart-filled frosting of Miitomo tastes hollow. There just isn’t much to do in this app. Yes, Nintendo has done a great job building an oddball social network. I keep wondering though where the gameplay hook is.

As a longtime Animal Crossing fan, the ability to decorate your Mii’s space would be most welcome. Minigames in the vein of the 3DS Mii minigames (Find Mii, Puzzle Swap, etc.) would elevate Miitomo to another level. Nintendo excels when they take a simple concept and refine the player experience.

Miitomo makes great first impression. The missing gameplay hook, the reason to stay and enjoy this weird world, must be found. Mario is indeed missing.

There comes a point where we are talking past one another. More interested in communicating our points of view versus practicing active listening. Direction, or more so the lack of it, unites us towards the brink of nothing. As a truck stuck in the mud, we are spinning our tires, flapping our collective jaws. We have no power, no authority, no solid foundation. Our relationships are artificial. Welcome to an age lacking any sort of relational depth, welcome to the age of social media.

Facebook, Twitter, both are tools that provide instant connection and communication across the globe. We can use these tools to promote change, voice ideas, and escape our everyday lives. Yet, our online interactions lack the tangible, the real. Body language, fluctuations in tone/voice, growing with one another, all lost in translation. We get to where we think we know others based on how much information we have shared about ourselves. As if time and information mean something. And they do. They equal relationships bobbing on the surface of life.

Who are you spending time with?

Are you even leaving the house?

When was the last time you looked away from your screen and made eye contact with another human?

Surface level relationships will never go beyond the surface. Diving equipment, time invested in person, allows us to get to know one another better. Being purposeful in our pursuit, this is key. We have to make time to have time to spend with others; We have to get over ourselves, move beyond technology.

An invitation to go for a walk, time set aside to enjoy nature and listen. Spending the lunch hour eating with a friend. Time invested. Physical time. We need more of this. We need to do this.

Be purposeful. Love people. Seek those around you who need a friend. We are all lonely. We want those around us to see us as we are. Help others get to know you. In the process, you can get to know them. Live life. Move beyond the surface and into the deeper waters.

Realize that this process takes time and that it won’t be easy. Things that matter in life never are.

I did something stupid the other day. Radio host, author, and speaker, Dave Ramsey, had posted the following Joel Osteen quote on twitter: “God’s mercy is bigger than any mistake that you’ve made.”

Nothing wrong with the quote. God’s mercy is huge! For some reason though it bugged me that Dave Ramsey was quoting Joel Osteen.

So I replied: “This is true, even if, as in Joel’s case, you are leading people to Hell.”

Yeah, I went there. I honestly believe that Joel Osteen leads people to Hell by promoting God as a genie (just pray super hard and God will give you your dreams) and by not talking about “negative” things such as sin.

I didn’t expect Dave to take the bait; I didn’t expect him to reply but had an inkling he might. Replying to me via twitter, in the face of all of his “followers”, he responded, “Struggle with Grace?”

Defensive now, I replied: “Most definitely. I also struggle with those who misrepresent the Bible.”

Dave’s disciples quickly descended upon me. Some offering support and others calling me to the mat for not being loving enough.

.: Social Media Misused :.

I want to admit, here and now, that I was wrong. Irregardless of my thoughts towards the Joel Osteen school of theology, I shouldn’t have ever responded to that original quote. I was baiting/trolling Dave Ramsey, effectively calling him a supporter of a false teacher. So Dave, if you are out there, I’m sorry. I hope you accept my apologies.

I want to intentionally reflect God in all that I do. Fighting a “twitter war” through an innocent man (Dave) is not the best way to do that. So again Dave, I’m sorry.

I rolled out of bed this morning and hit the floor. Time to stretch. As I groggily willed my body to move this way and that, I scrolled through my twitter feed. It was then that I noticed that there had been another shooting in Colorado.

Who is your compass?

The details of this mass theater shooting have been slowly trickling in all day. The shooter was an educated man, studying for a P.h.D. in neuroscience. The very image that simple fact conjures is not of someone hellbent on destruction but of someone with intelligence; someone who would know better.

No matter our title or station in life, we are all capable of carrying out terrible acts of violence against our fellow man. To think we are somehow above what suspect James Holmes did is to deny what we are, human.

As a Christian, I know that Christ calls me above the fray, to fight against this inner darkness. Christ is my compass.

I am not sure of what to make of today’s shooting other than to chalk it up to living in an imperfect world. Dr. Mohler wrote a post that discusses the need for answers in a time like this. I highly suggest checking it out.

Last night, I taught a Bible study on the Book of Joshua, chapter 24. A chunk of Joshua 24 is about the Israelites recommitting themselves/ renewing their covenant to follow God. Towards the end of the chapter, right after the people have agreed to the covenant, Joshua exhorts the people to:

23 “Now then,” said Joshua, “throw away the foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.” (NIV)

This got me thinking about the “foreign gods” that I allow into my own life. One of my daily routines, when I wake up, is to check:

My email

Twitter

Facebook

WordPress (for blog stats)

and the weather

I do all of these things before ever engaging in a conversation with my wife, let alone spending time with God. In a way, I have let social media become a god. So, today I didn’t go through my morning routine. Instead, I read my Bible for a bit (had trouble focusing) and then prayed for awhile. My time of prayer was awesome! I’ve been learning not to beat around the bush but to tell God exactly what I am thinking (even though He already knows). In an act as simple as putting down social media as the first thing I engage in, in the morning, I have “yielded my heart to the Lord”.

What foreign gods do you need to throw away? What is keeping you from yielding your heart to the Lord?